Trump Would’ve Beaten Obama In 2012

Wow, Trump would have beat Obama in 2012. Obama took 66 million votes in 2012, and Trump took 59.5 million so far. But the electoral college is where
our representative republic works for the states.
Of course this is a go back in time scenario.

This story goes into great detail. It goes to show that the old play book of name calling and "doing it for the children" may finally be over so we
can get to the adult conversations.

It’s easy to glance at Tuesday’s popular vote — which, with 92 percent of all precincts reporting, shows Hillary Clinton with six million fewer
votes than Barack Obama won in 2012 – and reach the conclusion that Clinton lost the White House because she failed to turn out the Democratic base.
But the truth is much more complicated.

While she underperformed relative to Obama’s 2012 totals in several Midwestern states — Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin — Clinton ran
virtually even with Obama in the battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. What’s more, she far surpassed
Obama’s 2012 vote total in Florida, the country’s biggest swing state. Yet somehow, while Obama carried Florida, Clinton lost it.

Which brings us to an important question: Was Donald Trump just good enough to beat a bad Democratic opponent on Tuesday, or does he deserve far more
credit? Could he, for instance, have competed with the vaunted Obama machine? The answer, somewhat shockingly, is yes. A review of vote totals in the
past two elections reveals that Trump 2016 would have defeated Obama 2012 in the electoral college

. (Disclaimer: This obviously is an apples-to-oranges exercise because no two elections are the same, nor are any two electorates. Still, unlike
debating whether the 2016 Cubs would defeat the 1927 Yankees, this is not an entirely abstract argument; a comparison of their respective performances
in the country’s most competitive states shows Trump edging Obama in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup.)

The math might seem impossible.
After all, Obama won nearly 66 million votes in 2012; Trump is currently at 59.5 million and should finish around 60 million, which will actually be
one million fewer votes than Mitt Romney won. How, then, could Trump have topped Obama in the electoral college? The answer: Republican turnout lagged
in certain parts of the country but shot through the roof in the nation’s most critical battleground states.

It doesn’t matter that Obama would have trounced Trump by nearly 300,000 votes in Michigan; by more than 200,000 in Wisconsin; by 175,000 in
Virginia; and by 160,000 in Colorado. It’s similarly meaningless that Obama would have narrowly defeated Trump in Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire.
The 44th president carried all of those states in 2012, and in this hypothetical contest, he would successfully defend all of them. But it wouldn’t
be enough.

The electoral college would produce a razor-thin margin: Trump 273, Obama 265. Again, this is an apples-to-oranges exercise. It’s impossible to
know how the Obama campaign might have targeted certain voters in a contest against Trump, or whether Trump would have the same success in the three
big battleground states against a more formidable opponent. But that’s not the point here; the point is that it’s not entirely fair to blame
Clinton for depressing Democratic turnout when she ran even with him in five of the country’s most competitive states and ahead of him in a sixth,
Florida, the single biggest swing state — and still lost the electoral college.

I voted for Trump, reluctantly, as did many others. Many (most?) of us just knew that after the last 8 years, this republic was so eroded by policies
of shameless, destructive intent, that a Hillary presidency would surely put us on a path that we would never, ever return from. We were terrified for
our country.

In other words, Hillary only lost because she was so despised by so many. I really don't think Obama was that hated, or I guess a better word would be
feared. Plus, he had the race card which you can bet would have been an Ace, running against Trump.

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